all about audience research in museums and other cultural institutions

Thursday, August 30, 2007

London musings ...

Had a wonderful set of meetings yesterday and learned heaps. Made all kinds of promises for web links, etc so decided to just do a blog post to put them all together. These are my impressions folks, so please feel free to comment and correct!

My first meeting was with Xerxes, Stuart, Susie and Catherine at the British Museum. The BM is at the early stages of implementing an audience strategy, including ways to more closely integrate audience research across the BM, and the use of cross-divisional project teams in planning exhibitions. We had a wide-ranging discussion about the role of audience research, measuring learning, and I finally understand how to use audience segmentation (thanks for that Xerxes!). The way the Interpretation Unit is set-up where staff take on roles of audience advocate and visitor research, among other things, was really interesting with the potential to shake the BM up over the next few years – one organisation to watch I think. I was also fortunate to catch up with Stuart to talk all things web and their plans for e-commerce and online access. Stuart is also very interested in the ideas surrounding online learning, which was great to hear.

Here are the links I promised you:

audience-research » Audience Research Articles – scroll down this page to download the paperEvaluation, Research and Communities of Practice: Program Evaluation in Museums. This paper outlines the history of audience research in museums, what it's all about and what are the future challenges

audience-research » Museum Learning – here's where various chapters from my thesis can be downloaded. Chapter 2 is the learning literature review and Chapter 7 outlines the major findings, how they relate to the literature and what they mean for museums

Next was a detailed visit to the Natural History Museum. Catching up on gossip with Michael, sharing various Facebook addiction stories, lunch with Emma and Georgina was followed by a tour through the systema metropolis exhibition with Alice. I have published my review of this exhibition on the ExhibitFiles website, but am unable to upload images for some reason (I think due to my hotel's web access), so I'll add them later.

A very invigorating two-hour seminar followed with a range of staff from learning, interpretation, content, multimedia and web who kept me on my toes! Again a wide-ranging discussion with a focus on how to get findings acted on, different methods for doing research, budgets, using consultants, all things web and the future and, finally, where best to place an audience research function (my answer – needs to be separate and report to a senior level to keep objectivity and enable research to feed in to the institution at the highest levels). The seminar was taped and I might post a short excerpt if I'm feeling brave (and have not been too much my usual tactless elf!). Finally, after birthday cake, I consumed several lagers at the Hoop chatting to some of the curators feeling I could have been back in Sydney – same issues different museums!

2 comments:

Thanks for initiating blog on Audience Research which will really be very helpful for initiating dialoge among the audience researcher.Please tell me something about statistical analysis of data related to your organisation.

What is the audience research blog?

Hi everyone. I'm conducting a blogging experiment - will this blog become a way for those of us who work in museum evaluation and audience research to share our work with the world, rather than via email to our contacts as happens currently?

My challenge to you, my colleagues, is to use this blog to post questions, answer queries and share experiences. I look forward to this adventure with a mixed sense of excitement and anxiety!

Disclaimer: The views expressed on this blog are those of individual post authors and are not the official views of the Australian Museum, who accepts no liability for content posted on this site. This blog is moderated by Lynda Kelly with input from Mel Broe an intern from the University of Sydney.